Paul Ryan: Going

“I find what happens is both parties speak to their party bases to win their primary elections, but what I think is necessary to have a national election worthy of being a majority party, we have to sell converts to conservatism. We have to go out and explain why our principles apply equally and universally to everybody and why our ideas are better than the alternatives.”

Paul Ryan

Idea , Thinking , Universe

“They shocked the American people. They shocked us. They certainly shocked me. I wasn't sure what kind of president Obama was going to be. I thought, maybe this guy is going to be a centrist-his rhetoric was centrist. His upbringing and history didn't suggest he was centrist but his rhetoric did. So I was thinking, well, we'll see. And then-bam!-out of the gates, these people had a hardcore-left agenda. We, along with the American people, were spectators while they took this government very far left, very fast. But what became so unnerving to us and the American people is that they used our rhetoric. They used the rhetoric of freedom and choice and opportunity to sell an inherently statist agenda; to sell an agenda that was completely the opposite of its rhetoric. And people started to realize that they were trying to transform the country using the rhetoric of the Right to push the substance of the Left.”

Paul Ryan

Source: Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders (2010), p. 7-8

People , Guy , History , Thinking

“Ideas, passionately promoted and put to the test—that’s what politics can be. That’s what our country can be…It can be a confident America, where we have a basic faith in politics and leaders. It can be a place where we’ve earned that faith. All of us as leaders can hold ourselves to the highest standards of integrity and decency. Instead of playing to your anxieties, we can appeal to your aspirations. Instead of playing the identity politics of “our base” and “their base,” we unite people around ideas and principles. And instead of being timid, we go bold.”

Paul Ryan

College Republican National Committee, "Paul Ryan's Unshakeable Optimism in the American Dream" http://www.crnc.org/paul-ryans-unshakeable-optimism-america/ 15 April 2016

People , Faith , Confidence , Idea

“We have to give the American people a referendum. We will win this referendum if we have it now. If we wait and delay five or six years we will lose this referendum. The public is way ahead of the political class. They get that things are broken. They get that we're spending their kids' inheritance and mortgaging their future. They are ready to be talked to like adults and not like children. So when they see the demagoguery that is directed toward people or ideas that are sincere and are real, it doesn't work anymore. The Democrats are going to come at us with their old playbook. They're going to tap into the emotions of fear, anger, and envy. But that's not aspirational. That's not hope and change, and I don't think it's going to work anymore.”

Paul Ryan

Source: Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders (2010), p. 15

Children , People , Fear , Hope

“Now it's a war on women; tomorrow it's going to be a war on left-handed Irishmen or something like that.”

Paul Ryan

Naples, Florida fundraiser, , quoted in * 2012-10-19
Bashir: Ryan compares ‘war on women’ to ‘war on left-handed Irishmen’
MSNBC
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/martin-bashir/49482269#49482269
2012-11-07

Women , War

“The fatal conceit of Obamacare is that we’re just gonna make everybody buy our health insurance at the federal-government level, young and healthy people are going to go into the market and pay for the older, sicker people. So, the young healthy person is going to be made to buy health care, and they’re going to pay for the person, you know, gets breast cancer in her 40s or who gets heart disease in his 50s. […] The whole idea of Obamacare is … the people who are healthy pay for the people who are sick. It’s not working, and that’s why it’s in a death spiral.”

Paul Ryan

Presentation for Capital Hill reporters, MSNBC "Paul Ryan flubs the basic idea behind insurance" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/paul-ryan-flubs-the-basic-idea-behind-insurance 9 March 2017

Death , People , Health , Disease